Wednesday 29 May 2013

Instagram Frame

I, like most other people on the planet Earth, am a bit obsessed with instagram. In fact, after iPhone-gate (an unfortunate series of events involving two iphones, a theft, and a washing machine), the thing I missed most about having a smartphone, was instagram.

Sure, its slowly getting crowded with pictures of food, which is especially annoying when I'm on a fasting day! And yes, every so often you get spam messages as you would have seen on myspace circa 2007 ("PC 4 PC? - No, I think not!).

But, it makes my mediocre little snaps look lovely, and has given a whole new definition to the word 'Selfie' - shameless, I know.

So when it came around to Laurie and I's first year anniversary, I wanted to find a way of documenting our first year together in a not too girly sort of way. At uni i lived with a boy, whose girlfriend constantly sent him canvases that she'd made, adorned with pictures of the two of them kissing, surrounded by song lyrics, sequins and love hearts. Cute, but in no way is this my style, let alone Laurie's!

It just so happened that Laurie had just moved into his flat in London too, so I wanted to try and incorporate something that he could use to liven up his room, but wouldn't be embarassing and too coupley to display.

Luckily, if there's anyone who loves instagram as much as I do, its Mr Beamont. Admittedly, he mostly takes pictures of his feet and/or tube trains, but occassionally there's nice ones of us on our adventures. Even having not had Instagram for four months of the year, I had plenty of pictures to choose from.

I found the website Printstagram, logged in with my instagram password, and voila, our photos were there for printing! They offer all sorts of products, but I just picked up a set of small square prints. They're 2.5 x 2.5 inches and you can buy 48 of them for $12. In English money, it turned out to be around £15 with shipping added on too.
They warned there could be a three week wait for them, so I left plenty of time, but the little FedEx box arrived on my desk eight days later!


They arrived beautifully packaged, and wrapped up really carefully, so they didn't get bent on the journey. But despite this, I couldn't help opening the packaging there and then and flicking through them at my desk!


They were all perfectly printed and have a really nice matte finish to them. It made my creative juices flare and I thought up so many different things I could do with them, that I nearly ordered another batch there and then!

Next stop was IKEA, to find a frame. I took my time trying to find something that suited the pictures, as well as Laurie's style. I decided on the 'Ribba', which was a bargain at £9.

Then came the tricky part - the actual construction.
I used the white backing paper that came with the frame as a background and removed the cardboard mount altogether.

I then did a quick bit of maths, and worked out that in a 15 x 17.5 inch rectangle, I could fit 42 of my 48 prints.

I drew the rectangle on the backing paper in pencil, and starte sifting through the photos to find my favourites, and put them in a nice order. I tried not to put too many with the same filter together, but thats just me being picky! Have a play and see what works! 
Once I decided on the order of the photos, it was time to stick them down. In hindsight, spray mount would have been more effective, but a good quality Pritt Stick worked well for me.


And voila - the finished product! I'm really chuffed with how this worked out, and will definitely be making one for myself when I'm not moving house every six months! Laurie loved it too, and it looks lovely and homely hanging on his new wall!



2 comments:

  1. This is great! I love it!

    Such a simple idea, I have so many pics on instagram that I love and I'm definitely going to give this a go!
    Great post!


    Photo-Jenn-ic

    xx

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Jen! Let me know how yours turns out - there were so many different frames I wanted to use!

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